But Laura couldn’t leave. She couldn’t leave Andy Descartes here alone.
Late in the afternoon, Laura and Chief Redbone drove up to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement regional office in Tallahassee to give their statements after handing the crime scene over to two FDLE agents. Both of them were preoccupied with their own thoughts and did not speak. Laura found refuge in the scenery as they drove in and out of the lengthening shadows. The grass along the roadside was a dazzling kelly green from the rain earlier today. The sun’s horizontal rays ignited the trees and shimmered on the blacktop like gold. Laura found herself looking back at the sunset behind them, the left-over clouds turning from tangerine to cherry-red to dark plum.
Andy Descartes would never see another sunset.
At FDLE, Laura gave her statement, as clear and detailed as she could remember. When she was through, Special Agent Jack McClellan shut off the tape recorder and smiled. Laura noticed he smiled a lot, but she wasn’t sure why.
“That should do it. You’re free to go.”
Free to go where? Laura thought. She pictured herself getting a ride to the Tallahassee airport, changing her ticket, boarding the plane. Maybe sip a cocktail as they passed over the Mississippi and she put the south behind her. Just a quick trip in and out of Florida, leaving an obliterated Apalachicola PD and broken lives in her wake.
But that wasn’t who she was. “There’s the disposition of the evidence. We need to work that out.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Jeremy Poitras, McCellan’s co-agent. He was a massive black man with an exquisitely-shaped shaved head. He wore an expensive suit. “I’m sure we can come to some accommodation.”
A fancy-ass word for a fancy-ass man. Laura said, “We’ll need to do forensics on the computer, if you find one.”
“We can work that out,” Poitras said.“ We have very good people here—we can do the specific computer forensics.”
“I want the computer to go to the DPS lab in Phoenix.”
McClellan broke in smoothly, “First of all, we don’t know he even has a computer. But if your agency can make their case to us, there’s a good chance we’ll release to you all the evidence that doesn’t pertain to our investigation.”
“I want to go into the de Seroux house. You understand I have a vested interest in this. Your guys are going to be looking for other things.”
“That’s fine by me,” Poitras said. “You can certainly tag along, but …” He consulted his watch. “You’d better get down there soon. I have a feeling they’ve already gone in.”
Laura felt her hostility rise to the surface. “I hope nobody opened any trapdoors,” she said.
The de Seroux house itself seemed normal compared to Lundy’s secret place. Cheap generic furniture. Plenty of fingerprints, but little else. There was a desk for a computer, a cheap printer, split phone lines, a surge protector, and APS, but the computer (or computers) were gone.
Again, Laura had the feeling that Lundy wasn’t coming back. He had left the furniture, but taken all his paper trail with him: checkbooks, statements, records. There was a square of less-worn linoleum in the room where the computer had been—she guessed it was where he kept his file cabinet.
The place felt like an abandoned ship.
The first to enter the de Seroux house was the FDLE Hazardous Devices Unit, entering through the tunnel from Lundy’s side, past the deployed weapon, looking for traps along the way. They found nothing on the other end except a corresponding trapdoor in the floor of de Seroux’s tool shed.
Laura wondered if Lundy expected his house to be searched and planned for that eventuality.
She had never been so tired. Perhaps it was because she felt like a guest at her own scene. She was allowed to gather evidence, but always under the watchful eyes of the FDLE special agents. She chafed; she never did well where she didn’t have some control.
They finished processing the house early in the evening of the next day. Laura realized she was starving. She went by the deli on Market and got herself a submarine sandwich and a bottle of water, took them down to Battery Park. It was the first food she’d had all day.
After finishing her sandwich, she walked out onto the long dock. There was a slight squall out in the bay tonight, the scent of rain hanging in the air, and the sky alternated between bruised blue and copper when the sun came through. Fishing boats—she guessed a lot of them were charters—were coming in at sunset.
Why did he booby trap the tunnel? That bothered her. If he was protecting the de Seroux house, did he really think the booby trap would stop the police? Or maybe was it just to kill whoever got that far—because he could.
Maybe he did it because he was embarrassed by the house itself, what it said about him—his obsession with Misty, his shrine to his mother’s memory, the Victorian parlor. Mother and son sewing together. Maybe he wanted to hurt whoever became privy to his secret life.
Impossible to know what was in his mind.
Tomorrow morning they would search the tunnel again. Maybe she’d find her answer then. But she was beginning to believe it was just what her mother used to call pure bloody-mindedness.
She’d have to ask him when she met him face to face.
A pristine white sportsfisher was coming in, dropping down into idle just inside the no-wake zone.
“I’ve always wanted a boat like that,” Chief Redbone said behind her.
For a big man, he was light on his feet.
“Lot of work though,” he added, leaning on the dock railing. “Time and money both.”
The light had turned red now.
